


Simulation

by AwwKeyboardNo



Series: Tarsus IV interconnecting stories [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Gen, Not Beta Read, Starfleet Academy, Tarsus IV mention, there's a little bit of violence but no one is in danger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 04:03:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7786054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwwKeyboardNo/pseuds/AwwKeyboardNo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nyota and Jim are assigned survival training together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simulation

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my submission for the assignment that was given to the participants of starfleet academy by spock-in-space on tumblr. The other particiapants are all fantastic, and spock-in-space is brilliant for doing this.
> 
> Edit 9/12/16: Hey! If you liked this fic, please feel free to check out my new chapter story about Jim on Tarsus. I have lots of plans for this universe, and I'm hoping to write more for it in the future.

“I can’t believe they put me with you,” Nyota groaned. Next to her, Jim Kirk gave her a big grin. She sped ahead so she didn’t have to look at him while they walked. 

“The Academy is a good judge of character,” he said, smugness bleeding from every pore in his body. 

Nyota didn’t know what she had done so wrong in a past life that she had been partnered with this man for survival training. She had very, very low expectations for how this weekend would turn out. 

“Good judge of ego, more likely,” she muttered. Kirk snickered. 

“Same difference, to them,” he said, also under his breath. Nyota bit back a smirk, and took out the PADD with their assignment on it to change the subject. 

“So,” she said, drawing out the syllable. “Our assignment is to survive three days on this, quote, abandoned planet, until we’re rescued--”

Kirk made a muffled snorting sound, but waved her away when she looked at him in askance. 

She huffed and continued. “--we have two day’s worth of supplies, but we have to find our own for the third day.”

This wouldn’t be a problem for her, at least. Ever since she had decided--at four years old, no less--that she wanted to be a part of Starfleet, she had spent a great deal of her free time coming up with contingency plans for her contingency plans. She wasn’t too concerned with how she would deal with things. It was Kirk she was worried about. The man didn’t look like he’d suffered more than a bar fight a day in his life. 

They rifled through the bag they had received at the beginning of the simulation. There was what one would expect of camping supplies--a tent, food packets, water, water purification tablets, utensils, however there were also a pair of phasers (locked on stun, she noticed). Nyota tried not to let these last items worry her too much. 

The first day passed by with minimal talking between the two of them. They walked through holodeck for a while before finally coming to a thatch of trees, with a stream running through the middle of it. 

“Do you want to set up the sleeping area, or get firewood?” Kirk asked her. He began to pull items from the bag, quickly and efficiently. 

“I’ll get the wood,” she said, and cringed for a half a millisecond at the wording. Thankfully, Kirk didn’t do more than grin childishly before turning towards his task. 

“Oh hey, wait, take this with you,” Kirk said, as she turned to leave. He tossed her the phaser. “Better safe than sorry, yeah?”

She stared at him for a second. “Right.”

Thankfully, the woodgathering passed without incident. When she returned, less than half an hour after she had left, Kirk had set up the tent and was quietly preparing the area where the fire would be. Nyota raised an eyebrow, reluctantly impressed. She set the wood down next to him. 

“If you can start the fire,” Kirk said, “then I’ll get the stuff ready for cooking.”

“Sure.”

The process went silently, enough that it was very slightly unnerving for Nyota, who was rather used to Kirk’s loud mouth, and was confused by his almost...sullen behavior. By the time that she had gotten the fire started and Kirk had gotten the food cooking, she had had enough. 

“What is wrong with you?” she near demanded of him. Kirk’s eyes widened in genuine confusion. 

“What?”

“You’re being too quiet. It’s weird.” She regretted speaking when his face lit up in a smile. 

“I knew you liked me! Does that mean I get to know your name?” His cheeky grin was enough to chase any confusion away from her and replace it with concentrated annoyance. "Is it Jessica?

“No. I don’t even know why I bother with you,” she said. He laughed. 

“I'll get it from you one day,” Kirk promised. Nyota didn’t deign him with a response, refusing to indulge him. 

She could not help but feel the tiniest bit of annoyance fade away when he handed her a bowl of soup, made from one of the packages of rations. It was, surprisingly, good, for what it had been made out of. Nyota didn’t tell him so, but from his--oddly enough, not the least bit smug--smile, she thought he might’ve read it on her face. 

“I'm cooking tomorrow,” she told him. Some part of her felt determined not to let him show her up. 

He shrugged in acquiescence. “Sure, you want first watch?”

Nyota eyed him suspiciously. “Are you going to wake up for second watch?” She had heard stories from Galia, who was Nyota’s roommate and Kirk’s girlfriend, that Kirk had the ability to sleep through anything. Which, now that she thought about it, implied things that she desperately did not want to think about. 

She very valiantly did not shudder. 

“I’ll bet you that I’ll be awake before you even tell me to,” Kirk said, and his smug grin was just a little sharp, like he was actually slightly insulted by the question. 

“Sure Kirk,” Nyota said disbelievingly. 

But, indeed, the moment before Nyota shook his shoulder to wake him in the middle of the night, Kirk turned over and sat up. He didn’t look the least bit groggy for having only slept for a few hours. Nyota rolled her eyes at his shamelessly smug smile. 

When Nyota woke the next morning, Kirk had restoked the fire from the coals and was boiling water over it. She sat down next to him. 

“I thought we agreed that I’d be cooking today?” she told him. 

“Oh you are,” he agreed frankly, “I was just going ahead and getting some extra water put aside in case we need it.”

Nyota was beginning to suspect that Kirk had planned out more contingency plans than even she had when he’d been younger. “You are aware that this is only for two more days, right?”

That sharp grin was back. “Always plan for the worst...Daniella?”

She gave him a deadpan stare. “No.” She gave up and went to go wash her face in the stream. 

Day two passed with similar non-incident. Against her will, Nyota found herself relaxing at how easy the simulation was. Oddly, the more time went on without trouble, the more strained and on edge Kirk seemed to become. 

He disappeared into the woods late in the afternoon, phaser in hand, and came back with a bag full of foliage and something akin to a rabbit slung over his shoulder. The animal had already been gutted. Nyota watched as he went through the processes of preserving the meat. When he caught her staring her grinned. “Better safe than sorry,” he said. 

She shook her head in some disbelief. 

That night, Nyota chanced a check on Kirk long before his watch shift was set to start. He wasn’t even lying down when she stepped inside the tent. “Okay, what is up with you? Have you even been to sleep yet?”

“Course,” he lied with a grin, not even trying to pretend he was telling the truth. “Nothings wrong with me Uhura--d’you want me to take over for you? You look ready for bed.”

“I’m--no, Kirk, you need to sleep,” she said. “If this is some kind of macho thing, or--or some kind of competition that you think we’re having--”

Kirk shook his head. “No, neither of those. Nevermind, come get me when your watch is over.” He laid down with his back to her, the conversation clearly over. 

Day three was strange. Kirk had somehow planned it so that they still had some of their rations left over, as well as what he had gathered the day before. Nyota tried not to let the waste get to her, though she wondered what would happen to the excess food after they were picked up at the end of the day. Their breakfast and lunch were eaten quickly and silently, though Nyota noticed that Kirk had given her a much larger portion than her’s. She didn’t say anything. 

When noon broke, the duo began packing up the campsite. When the time came to move though, they reached a stalemate. 

“Clearly we should head back towards the way we came,” Noyta said reasonably. Jim shook his head. 

“No, I think we need to be heading farther north, following the river. That’s where the rescue ships will be searching by.” 

“No, they’ll be searching near where our last signal would have been,” she disagreed, still keeping the rational tone in her voice. 

Kirk frowned. “They wouldn’t expect us to stay there for the full three days. There’s nothing for foraging.”

“Look Kirk–they would expect us to go back where we were–regardless of whether we went ahead for food, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when getting rescued. You’re supposed to wait where you are!” She had lost level-headed voice.

Kirk opened his mouth to further argue and then shut it again. He sighed and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay Uhura, we’ll retrace our steps.” He glanced back towards the stream, an unfathomable look in his eyes, before he walked past her, back the way they had came. 

Night was just beginning to fall again when they reached their point of entry. Kirk didn’t even look at Nyota as he began to unpack their supplies again. After a moment of staring, Nyota began to help. They worked in silence. 

Finally, Nyota broke it. “Where's the ‘I told you so’?” she asked. Kirk looked up at her and blinked. 

“What?”

Nyota sighed in frustration. “It’s dark, there’s no rescue, you must have been right.”

Kirk gave her a bitter smile. “No, I expected this to happen, no matter which way we would have went.”

Nyota’s eyebrows raise. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Kirk set down the sleeping pallet he’d been in the process of unrolling. “I researched this sim when I found out about it,” he admitted. 

“That’s cheating,” Nyota snapped, one part shocked, and two parts disappointed that he hadn’t deigned to tell her so. 

Kirk shook his head. “Not like that. I just looked through the history of the program--that’s crap you can find on the web.” He seemed to fold in on himself, but Nyota blinked and he was back to normal. “They did major overhauls to the design about nine years ago.”

It took Nyota half of a second to make the connection. “The Tarsus IV Massacre,” she breathed. She could be excused for needing to have it jogged from her memory. The entire event was more classified than--well, any other major event in Federation history, as far as the public knew anyhow. All any of them knew, was that Starfleet had been majorly late in rescuing a famine ridden Earth colony that had fallen prey to an insane ruler. Over half of people had been murdered.

Kirk nodded solemnly. “I thought, they would probably want to check how well the student would react to waiting for a rescue that wouldn’t come.”

Nyota shook her head in confusion. “That makes sense, but why would you think to look that up?”

Kirk gave her a long silent, assessing look. “I have...a friend who was....there when it happened.” He spoke over her intake of breath. “They go here too, and I didn’t want them to be caught unaware when they took this test.”

Nyota considered the man for a moment. There was something about his words that rang false, but his sincerity was there. She chose not too hard on his words. “So what do we do then?”

How long do we wait?

“Well, I don’t think Starfleet wants to actually endanger their students, so there’s probably only another day or so, but I don’t think it’ll be as easy as the last three were.” He eyed the phasers that sat next to them against their bag and stood to picked one up. “Stay alert--who knows what’ll happen next.”

Nyota followed suit. 

The ambush didn’t happen until the following night. It was during Nyota’s watch that three humanoid--Klingons, because of course--and Nyota did not hesitate to raise her phaser and stun the one directly in front her. It fell and became holographic fuze before fading out of existence. There was something unsettling about that, but she put it out of her mind to shoot the next one. 

“Kirk,” she called, and then Kirk was there and two of them faced off against the three Klingons that remained. 

“That was too easy,” Kirk muttered when the holograms had all faded away. 

“I’ll keep a look out,” Nyota said in agreement. “We should move out, head towards the river, like you said yesterday.”

They packed up and headed back towards the woods. They had barely made it into the line of trees, however, when they were ambushed yet again. There were twelve Klingons that time and the two of them were very quickly outnumbered. The leader knocked Kirk’s phaser from his hand and pointed his own at Nyota. 

“Surrender or the girl dies,” he rasped. Kirk looked from the Klingons to Nyota, brief desperation flashing on his face before he shuttered it away behind a calm face. 

“It’s me that you want anyhow,” he said, pouring confidence into his voice. “I’m the leader, she doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

The Klingons all looked to him in confusion, and that was the brief moment of distraction that Nyota needed. She quickly knocked the phaser out of the leader’s hand, kicked him in the gut and stunned him. Kirk shot her a grin as he scooped up his own phaser. They made quick word of the remaining Klingons. 

The moment they were gone, there was a sound like a bell overhead of them, and they had a brief view of a starship. Then the room released the simulation in favor of stark gray walls. 

“Please exit the holodeck,” a voice intoned from an intercom. 

Kirk grinned broadly at her. “We beat it,” he said obviously. Nyota could not help but smile back. 

“We did,” she agreed. She coughed and dropped the smile. “This doesn’t mean we’re friends Kirk, don’t get any ideas.”

His grin didn’t lose any of it’s prominence. “Wouldn’t dream of it...Joanne?”

“Keep guessing,” Nyota said, rolling her eyes and not bothering to hide her smirk. 

The two of them left the room.


End file.
